Board of Regents medals awarded for teaching excellence

The Regents’ Medal for Excellence in Teaching is awarded by the Board of Regents as tribute to faculty members who exhibit an extraordinary level of subject mastery and scholarship, teaching effectiveness and creativity and personal values that benefit students.

Two Change Hawaiʻi researchers Rossana Alegado and Alexander Stokes received this honor. Alegado is a member of the Emerging Areas and Seed Funding team and Stokes is a member of the Education and Workforce Development team.

Rosanna Alegado

Rosanna Alegado

Rosanna Alegado is an associate professor of oceanography in the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST). Her work involves meaningful academic collaborations and partnerships with Indigenous communities.

She led SOEST’s significant curriculum revision toward a required immersive course to ground all incoming graduate students in an understanding of working as marine biologists within Hawaiian culture. Its success has been recognized by the National Science Foundation with multi-year funding to foreground Indigenous knowledge, practices and values, and to transform and Indigenize higher education in STEM.

Alegado is regarded as an influential educator for other teaching faculty, as well as her students. She said, “By challenging my students to integrate multiple didactic frameworks, one can achieve the most comprehensive understanding of a subject.”

Her colleagues say that “Rosie is not popular by being easy,” and that “her efforts are the epitome of teaching exceptionalism.”

Alexander Stokes

Alexander Stokes

Alexander Stokes is an assistant professor of cell and molecular biology at the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. They developed practices to create inclusive, rigorous classroom settings with each student fully engaged. One method, Problem-Based Learning, values students directing their own learning, developing team-learning skills and assuming very active roles in their education.

Stokes developed a tool kit for inclusive pedagogy reflecting under-represented, predominantly female, low-income, first-generation students in undergraduate classes. A student said, “Professor Stokes utilizes a cutting-edge hybrid teaching style that unlocks students’ intellectual potential by acting as a conductor of a symphony in a collaborative learning orchestra. I was imbued with a passion and was inspired to further academic pursuits.”

A colleague said, “Alex is that professor, the one who transports students to a new view of themselves. Stokes is a leader in pedagogical innovation at the interface between biology, biomedicine and data.

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Board of Regents medals awarded for teaching excellence